OP opened with an insult. I didn’t see you replying to that. Also, I didn’t say they were an idiot, but meant to suggest that their premise was idiotic. I could have phrased that with language that was less loaded. My apologies.
So who, exactly, did I insult? You? A Japanese corporation?
Is it insulting to note that this ad is selling sex with a Woman Object?
It is what it is. It is selling sexually provocative Japanese teens with
the occasional computer incidentally in the background. They may be older
but they’re dressed younger.
Regarding “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think
it means,” you should retire that joke. It is cliche.
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Nothing like an underlit bell jar case to highlight your floppies:
(I do believe that I have some TP floppies in a box out in the garage…)
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How is choreographed dancing in relatively conservative clothing “sexually provocative”? And how does that compare with an ad for somebody stripping and practically masturbating with a (mysteriously regenerating) sandwich?
In either case, the psychology seems rather flawed, since customers are not getting sex with either product.
Viewers can and do decide for themselves how they are willing to be provoked. Buttons do not get pressed in a vacuum.
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I honestly don’t get you. From the dance moves to the costumes, the Japanese ad reads to me as way more cute (kawaii) than sexual.
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Bingo. Sexy doesnt sell here but kawaii definitely sells.
There are white people who like to engage in a kind of orientalism by telling the Japanese how things really are.
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I think my non-existend assembler abilities might be a hindrance in putting this on rails.
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Oh come on. In this country, the equivalent would be prancing Catholic school girls.
In any case, you accused me of insulting . . . . somebody, as a way of getting yourself off the hook.
Well no. The equivalent would be to use Japanese schoolgirls, as girls in Japan also go to school.
You’ll note they didn’t do that in this commercial. Instead the outfits are rather modest in terms of neckline and skirt length.
The dance routine doesn’t appear to be overtly sexual at all.
Your biggest objection seems to be that the young women are older than you guessed they are.
You insist on viewing something that was most likely intended to be cute as something sexual.
That’s bringing some pretty broad sterotypes about Japanese culture into this discussion, which is what I thought was insulting.
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I think comparing this computer ad to the one with Kate Upton is a bit of a stretch.
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…to put it mildly
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Where are the little boy mice? Where are the mommy and daddy mice? A whole tribe of schoolgirl mice living together, all on their own.
The concept of fan service was invented in Japan, and you seem to be willfully obtuse over the longstanding Japanese concept of schoolgirls as sexual objects. Here’s some information for you:
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Would be a separate ad with a separate band.
Would not be done with a band but rest assured we do have ads featuring families with parents and sometimes with grandparents.
The outfits here are not schoolgirl outfits and none of the members of Nogizaka 46 shown here are of that age group. That information has been presented before but you seem to choose to ignore it.
There are idol bands of that age range who wear outfits like school uniforms. None of the ad agencies or broadcasters here would air an ad with overt or covert sexuality of these bands as they’d get their licenses puled faster than you could imagine. None of the management agencies would have a band of this image/age do an ad like that to begin with as it would be business suicide.
As for your three links, the first two articles are essentially tabloid writing where some bits of fact get blown far out of proportion, a mix of orientalism and appeal to the prurient voyeuristic reader. Sadly most writing on Japan from the NYT & The Guardian is like this or so completely discolored by editorial voice that it ends up being old school People’s Daily type material. The third blog post is a mixed bag of opinion, fact and non fact.
Unfortunately it is hard to find good reporting on Japan these days since western outlets rely on stringers (many of whom have questionable to non existent language skills) or news wire reports from agencies which are owned by the PRC. In some cases articles in English get sourced from loose blog translations of local tabloids or English language editions of the three major Japanese newspapers but without providing any context on their source.
Feel free to take my opinions as what they are. Even after almost 20 years of living in Japan there is still plenty of things I have to ask people about and still dont understand completely. But in my own defense at least I’m not trying to monetize my ignorance.
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You seem to be really bad at making distinctions.
About the only thing the Carl’s Jr. ad you posted in your previous reply had in common with the Mouse laptop ad is that they were both commercials.
If anything it serves more as an example of everything the laptop ad is not.
It’s also really condescending to keep referring to a group of women with an age range of 18 to 24 as girls.
The members of the group Nogizaka46 feautured in the advertisement are young women.
They are not schoolgirls, and are not portrayed as such, no matter how much you want that to be true.
Since you have overlooked this, there are also two young men with mouse ears in the ad who perform similar dance moves.
They are not little boys any more than the women are girls.
Fan Service is a really broad term, but if you mean gratuitous titillation, then you are missing the mark here if you think this ad is a good example.
You are using a really broad brush to malign Japanese culture. Just because some people conflate “cute” with “sexual” does not mean that most Japanese do.
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